The countdown is on.
In 10 weeks, the Field of 16 will have been reduced to a final four in the pursuit of the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
To get there, teams will have to survive a series of three-race rounds while avoiding mistakes, misfortune and mayhem. At least one favorite will falter, while an underdog will overachieve. There will be controversy, chaos and the ever-coveted game seven moment.
Here is everything you need to know before a champion is crowned.
PLAYOFF SEEDING
When the playoffs begin on Sunday night at Darlington for the Southern 500, here is how the initial bracket will look.
1. Kevin Harvick +53
2. Denny Hamlin +43
3. Brad Keselowski +25
4. Joey Logano +18
5. Chase Elliott +16
6. Martin Truex +10
7. Ryan Blaney +9
8. Alex Bowman +5
9. William Byron +3
10. Austin Dillon +1
11. Cole Custer +1
12. Aric Almirola + 1
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13. Clint Bowyer -1
14. Kyle Busch -2
15. Kurt Busch -4
16. Matt DiBenedetto -5
Here’s how it’s going to work.
The bottom four drivers in points without a win in each of the three-race rounds will be eliminated. The drivers have been reseeded based on playoff points earned during the regular season.
Playoff points are earned for winning a race (5) or stage wins (1). The drivers will be reseeded after each three-race round adding however many playoff points were earned during the previous round.
The final four will race amongst themselves on Nov. 8 at Phoenix Raceway with the highest finishing driver earning the championship.
THE BIG 2 AND WHO?
The year was 2019 and they called Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. ‘The Big 3.’ The three former champions had dominated throughout the regular season, led the division in every statistical category and had accumulated so many playoff points that each were a virtual lock to make the final four before the playoffs even began.
The conversation shifted to who would join them at Homestead-Miami Speedway and would that team stand a chance.
Joey Logano had a single win entering the playoffs and won at Martinsville to clinch a spot in the championship race. He joked that the finale was ‘The Big 3 and Me.’ Logano had the last laugh that weekend, winning the Ford EcoBoost 400 and capturing his first championship.
The 2020 season also has a ‘Big 3’ of sorts, even though it’s not as pronounced as 2018. Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski are the only drivers with three-plus wins and average finishes below 10.0.
Here is what the field will have to overcome over the next 10 weeks:
Kevin Harvick: 7 wins, 6.6 Avg. finish, 21 top-10s in 26 starts
Denny Hamlin: 6 wins, 8.9 Avg. finish, 17 top-10s in 26 starts
Brad Keselowski: 3 wins, 9.7 Avg. finish, 19 top-10s in 26 starts
Harvick and Hamlin are near locks to make it all the way to the championship race, and there isn’t a huge points discrepancy between Keselowski and Joey Logano, the fourth seed.
Joey Logano: 2 wins, 13.5 Avg. finish, 14 top-10s
That’s to say you can go ahead and pencil Harvick and Hamlin into Phoenix, assuming they simply finish races and there are not three upset winners from within the Round of 8 in October.
From there, it’s a wide-open field to determine who will join them. Logano has done this before. Ryan Blaney should have won multiple races this season but suffered a tremendous amount of misfortune and self-inflicted mistakes. Chase Elliott and Martin Truex Jr. are capable of consistently running near the front of the field.
Clint Bowyer, Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch will open the playoffs below the first round cutline but each have resumes that lead you to believe they could find speed over the next 10 races as well.
Perhaps the 2020 season is ‘The Big 2 and Who?’ It’s time to find out.
NASCAR’s NEW LOOK PLAYOFFS
For much of this century, NASCAR’s scheduling policy revolved around moving its biggest events to the largest media markets instead of the best tracks.
It began in the mid-90s when North Wilkesboro was sacrificed for Fort Worth. The Southern 500 was moved from Labor Day weekend to March in the efforts to enchant Southern California. The playoffs began at Chicagoland Speedway and featured stops at tracks with casinos or just outside of large metropolitan area — competition product be damned.
It was a misstep and one that has been partially rectified with the 2020 Cup Series playoff schedule. NASCAR has saved the best for last this autumn.
The first round includes Darlington, Richmond and the Bristol Night Race. The second round features Las Vegas, Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL. The third round is Kansas and Texas but ends at Martinsville. The decision to take the championship race away from Homestead-Miami Speedway stings but not as much with the move to Phoenix Raceway.
That’s a lot of short tracks and road course racing, while minimizing intermediate tracks and the awful high downforce, low horsepower rules package.
The best is yet to come.
CAN HARVICK AND HAMLIN REACH 10 WINS?
Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin are so much more than the championship favorites — they are a pair of superstars in the midst of historic seasons.
At seven and six wins respectively, it’s conceivable that one of them will reach 10, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since Jimmie Johnson in 2007. How rare would that be? Here are the last six 10-plus-win seasons.
2007: Jimmie Johnson (10)
1998: Jeff Gordon (13)
1997: Jeff Gordon (10)
1996: Jeff Gordon (10)
1993: Rusty Wallace (10)
1987: Dale Earnhardt (11)
This is really hard to do, and there are two teams with a near equal shot at doing so. But with only 10 races remaining, it’s unlikely that both will get there.
NBC Sports analyst Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a keen history of the sport, and says this type of dominance is healthy as long as it doesn’t happen every year.
“We have to have those moments where really somebody stands up and does something really uncharacteristic or really unique, and that’s basically what we have with Denny and Kevin,” Earnhardt said.
His broadcast partner, and fellow Cup Series veteran, Jeff Burton agreed and offered an impassioned defense of this kind of dominance.
“I hear people say all the time it’s not good for the sport that Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick are winning all the races and I think that’s a bunch of crap,” Burton said. “They’re our sport’s most popular leaders. We had Jeff Gordon winning tons of races. We had Rusty Wallace winning tons of races. We had a lot of people win a lot of races in a year during the sport’s most popular time.
Part of sports is pulling for your guy and pulling against other people. The New England Patriots have been the pinnacle, right? They’ve been the best team in the NFL for a long time. That doesn’t hurt the NFL. The rivalries that get created by that, the passion to beat them, the fan bases that absolutely despise them is good for the NFL because it creates rivalries. It creates passion.”
Yes, Harvick and Hamlin will continue to run up front, but this championship format will give at least two other contenders a shot at unseating them at the end.
The aforementioned New England Patriots went 16-0 in the NFL regular season, and won its division and conference championship games before losing in Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants.
There is something extra special about beating that kind of dominance head-to-head.
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